Hilary Fannin: This is a bad weekend for scared, superstitious singletons

Let’s face it: if you are a grudgingly single, lovesick triskaidekaphobic, this is probably not going to be a red-letter weekend for you, eh? If you are a scared, superstitious singleton, girding your loins against the grim confluence of Friday the 13th and another lonely ride on the Valentine’s Day roundabout, it’s time to get a proverbial grip.

Triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13) is nothing more than a delusional disorder, while Valentine’s Day is a great big pain in the the wilting peonies.

Let’s defrock the superstitions first. Putting your new shoes on the table, cracking open your umbrella indoors or strolling around under other people’s ladders is not actually going to kill you. Random acts of violence or a dodgy genetic inheritance might, while a surfeit of Creme Eggs certainly won’t help matters.

Similarly, cats of any hue or disposition crossing your path are simply that: moggies crossing your path because they’re on the way to the gym. It doesn’t mean you’re going to win the lottery or become a YouTube sensation. Cats are cats, not messengers from the shagging gods; if they were, they wouldn’t risk sleeping in the tumble-dryer.

Some people enjoy Valentine’s Day, but then some people also enjoy caravanning and crazy golf and painting the skirting board; there really is no accounting for taste.

I mean, no one is begrudging restaurateurs, florists, jewellers, hosiers and genital gemstone importers the spike to their businesses. But the group-hug nature of the day, which sees so many of us parade to the stationer/chocolatier/ waxing specialist like well-rehearsed lemmings, certainly doesn’t make my sarky D-cup runneth over.

Ed Sheeran song

I was queuing up to buy (and consume) an entire loaf of rye bread, having cracked after 24 carbohydrate-free hours. I was feeling a little teary (which happens if I’ve nothing to put the butter on) when that ubiquitous Ed Sheeran song started delicately tinkling out of the Tannoy system (am I showing my technological age here?).

He was singing that line, “People fall in love in mysterious ways”, and I was thinking, well, they don’t actually. At least, not according to some recent psychological theorising, which more or less posits that we can simulate conditions of intimacy and propel people into falling in love by putting a random couple together (two people who’ve never met before, I mean) and getting them to ask each other 36 specific questions.

The questions, developed by New York-based psychologist Arthur Aron, come in sets of three, each set gradually becoming more intimate.

Here’s a random sample: have you got a secret hunch how you will die? When did you last sing to yourself? How do you feel about your mother? (You know, the kinds of questions we all engage in after a couple of bottles of Liebfraumilch and a chicken korma.)

Warm and fuzzy inside

Anyway, the group of random experimentees, encouraged to talk about their emotions, and pleased to find someone listening to them, ended up feeling close and connected and warm and fuzzy inside.

Hardly rocket science, but it could be fodder for Hallmark if the card company was interested: Roses are red / Violets are blue / We’ve all got to snuff it /How’ll it happen for you?

So. Let’s take it as a given that you get through Friday the 13th without being scorched by the fires of Hades or breaking your neck on a paint pot. You wake up looking for love, but you haven’t really got the chutzpah to talk to random strangers about their most treasured memories or secret ambitions.

In that case, you can always use the following handy tips to surefire romance that I invested hours of my time unearthing online. They are applicable to either gender and whatever predilection you care to mention:

• Wear red (but be careful – bulls will also notice you).
• Grow your hair.
• Have your teeth whitened and smile a lot (unless you're a man, in which case foster a grim countenance).
• Wear less make-up (what???).
• Have a waist-to-hip ratio of seven to 10 (or maybe it's 10 to seven – but don't worry, any kind of waist at all is a serious bonus).
• Speak in a high-pitched voice if you're female and not very much at all if you're male. If the latter, just do stern nodding and make occasional conversational interjections, such as "What is your saddest memory?" or "If you could change just one thing in the world, what would it be?"

Well . . . I’d only celebrate Valentine’s Day on leap years actually.